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| The "Cradle of the King's Daughter" in Bosra is now biting the dust |
Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces this week destroyed one more distinct
monument at a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The
monument -- known as a kalybe
or open-air temple for the “Cradle of the King’s
Daughter” -- is in Bosra ash-Sham,
once an ancient city in southern Syria.
Bosra
ash-Sham is 120 kilometers from Damascus and part of Deraa province. It counted
a population of 19,683 in a 2004 census. The current figure is down to a few
households.
Indiscriminate
tank shelling and warplane bombing has also pulverized the “Cradle of the
King’s Daughter” dating back some 1,800 years.
The
human cost of Assad’s 19-month-old war on “terrorist gangs” has been
staggering: at least 38,000
deaths (over 60 percent of them in
the past five months), tens of thousands more maimed, detained or
missing, over half-a-million refugees, and 1.5 million internally displaced
persons (IDPs).
For several months now, the
regime has been using mostly helicopters and warplanes to drop cluster bombs
and barrels of TNT on homes, hospitals, pharmacies, schools, historic sites,
medieval markets, museums, mosques, cars, bakeries and fuel queues in countless
cities, towns and villages.
In late September, a vast
and well-preserved labyrinth of shops, storehouses, schools and courtyards in
Aleppo's ancient market were set on fire as government troops tried to dislodge
insurgents from the center of Aleppo near the old city, another
The old city, with the souk at its center, is the soul of Aleppo, one of the
world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities and Syria’s largest. (See “Cuba,
Baghdad and turning Aleppo to rubble and ash”).
Two weeks later, Aleppo's Umayyad Mosque,
considered one of the most stunning in the world, was also damaged in fighting
for control of the city.
“The reports from Aleppo are deeply
distressing,” said UNESCO
Director-General Irina Bokova. “The human suffering caused by this
situation is already extreme. That the fighting is now destroying cultural
heritage that bears witness to the country’s millenary history -- valued and
admired the world over -- makes it even more tragic.
“The Aleppo souks have been a thriving part
of Syria’s economic and social life since the city’s beginnings. They stand as
testimony to Aleppo’s importance as a cultural crossroads since the second
millennium B.C…”
The Ancient City of Aleppo was inscribed on
UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1986, in recognition of its “rare and authentic
Arab architectural styles” and its testimony to the city's cultural, social,
and technological development from the Mamlouk period. It is one of six
Syrian World Heritage Sites.
UNESCO listed the Ancient
City of Bosra -- home to the “Cradle of the King’s Daughter”
-- as a World
Heritage site six years earlier, in 1980.
Bosra
ash-Sham was the first Nabatean city in the 2nd century BC. It was renamed Nova Trajana Bostra under the Roman
Empire.
The
city flourished and became a major metropolis at the juncture of several trade
routes, including the Roman road to the Red Sea.
The
Sassanid Persians conquered Bosra in the early 7th century, then the Byzantines.
The Rashidun army under Khalid ibn al-Walid (who is buried in Homs) captured
the city in the Battle of Bosra (634).
Bosra
played an important part in the early life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
According
to Islamic tradition, when Muhammad was either nine or twelve years old, he met
a Christian Nestorian monk named Bahira
in Bosra during his travel with a Meccan caravan, accompanying his uncle Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib. When
the caravan was passing by his hermitage, the monk invited the merchants to a meal.
They accepted the invitation, leaving the boy to guard the camels. Bahira,
however, insisted that everyone in the caravan should come to him. Then a
miraculous incident indicated to the monk that Muhammad was destined to become
a prophet.
According
to legend, an unnamed monarch built the open-air temple
with a cradle for his daughter around the second century after being
told by a clairvoyant she would die before turning 18 from a poisonous scorpion
sting. Once the cradle was built to protect her, slaves would carry food and
everything else she needed up the columns. After a while, a deadly scorpion
hiding in a bunch of grapes stung and killed her.
Assad
shells and bombings have this week put the cradle six feet under.
